What’s new:
Welcome to the Compliance Corner. The beginning of the new year is always a busy time. We have to finalize projects and get ready for the Interoperability Workshop (IOP) North America which is traditionally in March.
As described in the “looking forward” section at the end of last year’s newsletter, we have ambitious plans for 2025. They include updates for most of the tools, releasing new testcases, and increasing the percentage of automated tests. These goals also include support for Ethernet-APL.
Ethernet-APL is forging ahead, becoming a significant technology to bring Ethernet connectivity to devices in the process industry. In an important initial and strategic decision this year, the OPC Foundation has decided to add Ethernet-APL certification testing to the scope of their certification test labs. With the addition of testing of the physical layer, the OPC Foundation will bring economically-priced certification testing to its members and provide one-stop certification testing for OPC UA enabled Ethernet-APL devices.
Following these goals, we have finished the definition of GDS test cases (AliasNames, certificate management, discovery, user authentication, and token services) and are working on the automation of them. This will provide the system-level testing that was mentioned in the last newsletter. Certificate management of OT systems has become a hot issue for End Users. With larger numbers of modern devices within their OT environment, security configuration of devices, from centralized tools, becomes a crucial part of their defense . This has triggered multiple GDS products to be brought to the market, with several additional GDS products in various stages of release.
Another key piece of testing that is nearing completion is automated testing for the UAFX ConnectionEstablishment SetCommunicationConfiguration ConformanceUnit. This allows automated testing of dynamically created bidirectional PubSub controller-to-controller communication. This testing includes examination of the connections, error handling, and even diagnostics related to the connections.
With regard to the IOP, the upcoming event is the first standard OPC UA IOP to be combined with an OPC UA FX Plugfest. The Workshop is being hosted by Schneider Electric in Andover, Massachusetts. With OPC UA FX implementation progressing from pure prototype to initial product offerings, intermixing the IOP allows vendors to get a better feel for what they will encounter in future OPC UA enabled controllers. It will especially allow client-vendors to gain experience with OPC UA FX-based controllers. We are looking forward to the event and will provide outcomes and next steps in a future newsletter.
If you have questions on these topics or are interested in getting involved in our activities, please do not hesitate to contact us at compliance@opcfoundation.org
Paul & Alexander